A conventional computing platform may include diagnostic and management software tools. An operator may employ these tools to maintain, monitor and/or troubleshoot the computing platform. Such tools are typically executed within the operating system environment of the platform. Accordingly, the usefulness of these tools is limited if the operating system environment crashes, is compromised or tampered with by a computer worm/virus or malicious user, is disabled by a user, or is otherwise unavailable.
Next-generation platforms include an execution environment that is isolated from host operating system processes. Some proposed execution environments allow for isolated monitoring/management of hardware resources. Regardless, there is a need for a system that may provide more efficient and more comprehensive host management than what currently exists.